Dogged Blog

Meme Maker, Meme Maker, Make Me a Meme

I can't even tell you where I first saw this because it's EVERYWHERE ... I finally went and took the test to find out how much of a "Republican" I am.

I didn't answer the question on Hitler because the answers were all crap.

End result: 

You are:
 8%
 Republican.

You're a complete liberal, utterly without a trace of Republicanism. Your strength is as the strength of ten because your heart is pure. (You hope.)

Play here.

Girls Don't Count

Via a diary on Daily Kos, from the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, this story of a pregnant 13-year-old girl standing in front of  Judge Ronald Alvarez asking why she's being prevented from having an abortion as she wishes:

"Since you guys are supposedly here for the best interest of me, then wouldn't you all look at that fact that it'd be more dangerous for me to have the baby than to have an abortion?" she asked. Alvarez called that "a good point."

Dr. Ethelene Jones, an expert in obstetrics and gynecology, testified earlier in the hearing that abortions are "definitely" safer than full term pregnancies for girls L.G.'s age.

"At her age and at her stage of gestation ... her risk of death from an abortion procedure is about 1 in 34,000," said Jones, who has held positions at Planned Parenthood and the ACLU. "The risk of death in pregnancy is about 1 in 10,000."

This girl is a ward of the state, living in a shelter. She is THIRTEEN! They are willing to increase her risk of death more than THREE HUNDRED PERCENT to prevent her from having the abortion she wants to have?

This isn't about any "culture of life;" it's about controlling what girls and women do with our bodies.

And the Fat Wars Continue...

I blogged about a post on obesity over at Alas, a Blog yesterday, and went back tonight to read the comments section, where I left a pretty long comment of my own.  I decided to post a version of it here as well, because I think that it touches on a couple of really critical issues about body image and eating.

I am not sure of whether to cry or  laugh at the well-meaning prescription of large amount of exercise and food intake reduction for obesity. Gee, why didn't I ever think of that?

I invite you to my life. I invite you to contemplate starting an aggressive exercise program when getting out of bed seems daunting. I invite you to eat less when you have a wild beast prowling around your blood stream, a beast called "plummeting blood sugar." I invite you to restrain your appetite not just a few isolated times a day, but EVERY WAKING MOMENT.

No one has enough will power to live that way. No one.

Now, I have lost over 123 pounds in the last 23 months eating a very healthy, high fat, low carb plan that works very well for me. I have been thinking a lot lately about will power and this plan, and why it works for me when other ways of eating did not.

There is a thing our bodies seem to have, called an "appestat." (Whether we "have" one or not I don't know - perhaps this is just a metaphor.) It's like a thermostat on a heating or cooling system, but it regulates our perception of being full or hungry. In many of us, it's broken. Thin people, when put into clinical studies where they are required to eat more food than they want to, find it hard to do. They might gain some weight, but as soon as the study ends, they rapidly lose it and return to previous intake of food. They have normally functioning appestats.

But if your appestat is malfunctioning, the reality is, it's very hard BIOLOGICALLY to realize you've eaten enough, or that you aren't hungry, or that you need to eat. The connection between a physical need to eat and other prompts to consume food, such as boredom, loneliness, or just the desire to taste something, has been disrupted. ALL your decisions are being made under the constant influence of blood sugar fluctuations (which are biochemical but have effects that feel emotional) or cravings (ditto!) or a sincere inability to recognize if something is or isn't "hunger." What IS that odd feeling in your tummy? Who the hell knows, when the whole system is busted! Are you thirsty? Tired? Stressed? Do you have ANY idea?

People with functioning appestats most likely DO know the answers to these questions when they consider them. Those of us whose appestats are not working honestly don't. It's like that pathway in our brain is just not going where it's supposed to be going.

What Joe in the comments section at Alas, A Blog seems to be saying is that we have to decide intellectually what we are going to eat and how much and what kind of exercise we're going to get, and not deviate from that, regardless of how our bodies respond. That is the key to the "willpower" or "decision-based" responses to eating problems.

But let's be real. Who among us can, literally every moment of every hour of every day, rely on strength of will and our intellect and our previous decisions, and NEVER deviate from them? Who doesn't get tired or stressed, or forget to plan a meal, or run out of money to pay for whatever it is you're SUPPOSED to be eating? None of us.

And when in situations of stress, or fatigue, or when rushed or sick, we don't tend to make our best decisions no matter who we are. And for people with eating disorders and serious weight problems, all issues around food become even more emotionally-charged and stressful, which just perpetuates a negative emotional state. So inevitably, we falter, we fail, we backslide, we mess up. Which also feeds the downward spiral.

This is why my particular plan works so well for me: It restored the functioning of my appestat and removed the 95 percent of my problem with food that was biochemical rather than genuinely emotional. My "decision-making ability" and "will power" (which are formidable) were able to handle that 5 percent, probably could have handled even more. But they simply weren't enough, and couldn't possibly have been enough, to overcome the 95 percent that was biochemical. No one is that strong, and no one should have to be that strong when other strategies will work better than the exercise of willpower.

I can fight a craving for a few hours. I can fight a couple bad days a month around my period. I can get through a normal amount of stress, and a few crises in a year. What I can't do is resist cravings and hunger and a complete lack of feedback from my body as to whether or not I'm hungry, full, whatever, every waking moment of my life. NO ONE can do that. It's impossible.

Having gone from having no functioning appestat to almost overnight having one, I am excruciatingly aware of the difference. This is not about will power or decisions, at least, not about being able to use them as a weight control strategy. It's doomed to failure in all but the most extraordinary of individuals.

As long as I eat this way, which I find very easy and satisfying, my willpower is sufficient to handle the minor emotional impulses to eat and the PMS factor. I can use tools like certain supplements that make cravings less, like chromium, and I can check the amount of fat in my diet and increase it, knowing that makes me feel less hungry.  I can stay in a range where the demands on my will power are modest and don't overwhelm me.

But I couldn't live with each meal being a battle. I couldn't go back to my life before this change. I couldn't bear it if every day was like the day before my period, when there is a beast in my gut demanding to be fed.

And that is the reality for most people who either do not benefit from the plan that helped me, or who don't discover a plan that works for them for whatever reason. And no amount of sanctimoniousness on the part of someone else (including me), can change that.

And Gee, It's Been Working So Well, Too!

I'm breaking the "Kathy Flake no hit-and-run blogging pledge" yet again, but I can't help it. Besides, this is my third post of the day (trying to make up for not blogging five days in a row last week maybe).

From Ampersand at Alas, a Blog:

Weight-loss fanatics have dominated the conversation about fat for over half a century; what can they show for their efforts? Are Americans now less fat? Are we happier about our weights and our bodies?

Even assuming that we accept the paradigm that "fat is bad," which I don't, but let's pretend for a moment that we do, this point seems obvious. Hello, folks, wake up and smell the frigging coffee!

Lots of great general commentary over there, by the way, on weight loss, body image, etc. in their Fat, Fat, and More Fat category.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Flaming Outrage

I'm not sure how to elevate Jon Stewart any higher, since I'd already made him Top Media God of the Dogged Blog. But if it hadn't already happened, "Gaywatch" from last night's episode would have been enough to turn my love into worship.

Now, the segment is fantastic on many levels, and I'll give you a link down below and I recommend you download it and watch it, even if  you have a really slow dialup connection and it takes all night. It's that good, and yes, it's also that funny. (And yes, I do know I used that line before.)

But there are two elements of this segment that lift it way, way above the usual funny, clever, politically eye-opening stuff Stewart does all the time.

One of them was his scathing commentary on the media's "balance" meme, the way they seem to think that by presenting one person who is lying and twisting facts and making outrageous assertions, that as long as they present someone else with a different viewpoint, they've done their job. He presented a brief clip of CNN's Kira Phillips interviewing an unidentified anti-gay spokesperson about recent legislation banning gay people from adopting foster children in Texas (imagine that!). This guest contended that a scientific research study in Illinois had proven... yes, she said it was a "proven fact"... that children raised by gay couples were eleven times more likely to be sexually abused than children raised by heterosexual couples.

Randall Ellis of the Lesbian/Gay Rights Lobby of Texas was invited to respond, which he did, pointing out that no reputable research backed up this claim. Cut away to Stewart, who concurred, referring to the "study's" author as a "knucklehead" and mentioning the "research" was comprised of an Internet search and had been discredited. Surely, he asked the camera earnestly, Phillips would set her audience straight on the facts?

"It's an interesting debate, a good debate, thank you very much," concluded Phillips. Her co-anchor Carol Lin seemed a bit uncomfortable, but just said in a mock-reproving tone that she had a few things to say about the debate that she'd get to during the commercial break.

Back to the Daily Show studio, where Stewart looked right into the camera and, well... screamed, "Why don't you call them on their bullshit ON THE AIR? You're an ANCHOR for fuck's sake!"

What I loved about this, and what brings me to my second point, was not really Stewart's comment itself, which wasn't what you'd call an incisive political commentary. No, it was his rage, deep and genuine. Rage at the media for their irresponsibility, their presenting lies as if they were just a difference in viewpoint, a matter not of fact but of opinion.

But more than his fury at the media, which isn't exactly news, was his palpable anger at the injustices he outlined. At one point he said, actually looking very upset, "You know what's interesting? I'm not fucking making this up." As one poster said in the comments section on a Daily Show fan blog, they had "never heard him swear so much" before.

See, joking aside, I love Stewart for being angry on my behalf, for being capable of getting upset - really, visibly upset - at something wrong being done to me and other lesbian and gay people. After being told over and over by so many so-called "progressives" that equality for lesbians and gay men is not really important, that we have to wait, that we need to get out of the limelight and stop being so pushy and demanding, it's truly balm to a battered spirit to see my struggle taken not just seriously, but to heart, by someone who already has those rights.

Ooops, there I go again, losing you. It always happens when I get on this subject. So forget everything I just said and go watch the clip here. I'm not funny, but he sure is.

[UPDATE]: I'm not the only fan. Crooks and Liars loves him too, and Hoffmania.com says "Jon Stewart Shows Why He Won the Peabody."

[UPDATE 2]: I believe this is the "study" referenced by the unnamed CNN guest and by Stewart, and discussed in the Crooks and Liars comments section. Certainly Paul Cameron is a knucklehead:  Same Sex Marriage

[UPDATE 3]: This is the "study," and it was done by Cameron's "Family Research Institute," but is not the "Same Sex Marriage" "study" I linked to above: Illinois Foster Care. Caution, these are nasty people and they LIKE Cameron.

[UPDATE 4]: Four updates???? Yikes. But Dan at Dannation posted a link to his blog down in the comments section, and when I checked it out, I found a link to this article in today's Wall Street Journal. It's in the "Today's Freebies" section so no registration required, but I'm not sure if the article is permanently archived or not. It discusses the "Gaywatch" episode, does a pretty good job for a conservative rag at debunking Cameron's "study," and is well worth the click! As Dan said, "Wonders never cease."

Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart

As my friend Ginger in Kansas will attest, I'm no fan of Wal-Mart. On the one hand, that's easy for me to say because we don't have one around here. In fact, other than a couple of gas stations and the local Safeway, we have no chain businesses here at all. (Which is of course a large part of why I live in this sleepy little river resort area that time forgot, but that's another post for another day.)

I'm always sending Ginger news items and links to blog posts about Wal-Mart's Dark Side, because since the advent of Big Box Retail destroyed her local downtown (as recounted so well in Thomas Franks'  What's the Matter with Kansas?), Wal-Mart is one of the few places in her area where she and her family can buy things like socks. In fact, I've driven her so crazy with this deluge of anti-Wal-Mart propaganda that I think she might have put "Wal-Mart"  into her spam filter.

So instead of sending this little Mother's Day idea off to Ginger, I'm sharing it with all of you. From Wake-Up Wal-Mart via Blog for America:

Mother's Day is all about honoring our Moms. Unfortunately, Wal-Mart's idea of honor and respect for women includes unequal wages, fewer promotions, and inadequate health care.

Although Wal-Mart employs over 700,000 women—72% of its workforce—women are paid up to $5,000 less than men for the same work and make up only 15% of store managers.

So, as a special treat, we are sending Lee Scott, Wal-Mart's CEO, "the Mother of all Mother's Day Cards." Our goal is to have 20,000 Americans pledge not to buy their Mother's Day gifts from Wal-Mart until the company changes it discriminatory practices towards women.

A Conscience Clause Conundrum

If you have been completely lost in the saga of Terry Schiavo/Michael Jackson/the Pope's last days or some other media sideshow for the last month, or perhaps in a coma, you may be unaware that pharmacists are rising up and declaring that they will no longer fill prescriptions that they don't approve of, such as birth control pills for unmarried women or so-called "Plan B" emergency contraception for anyone. Some even take your prescription hostage and refuse to transfer it to another hospital, which given the time factor involved with emergency contraception is something of a problem.

This so-called "conscience clause" got a humorous but scary workup from Daily Kos' Bob Johnson, who is OK by me  because he's funny and smart, but mostly because his dog blogs under his name from time to time. But the real zinger, the commentary that most sums up exactly what is wrong with this exercise in sanctimoniousness, is to be found in the comments section, posted by Smallbottle:

Why are there no conscience clauses for Grace employees who don't want to pollute, KBR employees who don't want to cheat the taxpayer or Exxon employees who don't want to screw grandma?

I may have no problem with birth control or morning after pills, but I do indeed have a conscience. And it kills me, absolutely kills me, to fork over my tax dollars to fund Bush's Bamboozlepalooza Tour on Social Security, his misbegotten Iraqi war and occupation, and frankly, his frigging electricity bill. The list doesn't end there, either.

So what makes  my local pharmacist (well, not MY local pharmacist, as the good folks in white coats at our local mom and pop pharmacy have a big sign up letting us know they will fill our prescriptions without judgement or hassle) so special?  Where do I sign up to become a conscientious objector to funding our government's  obscene foreign policy? Can I opt out of paying for Bamboozlepalooza somewhere, a kind of taxpayer dollars "do not call" list?

And will the Pharmacists for Life sign on to support my consicence clause?

Spread Thin

My friend Gina got a little  dig in at me in the description field of her blog roll the other day, suggesting... well, not suggesting, actually SAYING ... that I'm "spread a little thin" these days.

I'd like to believe she's referring to my 123.4 pound weight loss (of course I'm obsessive about that four-tenths of a pound), but I think she might be talking about a few other things, like the fact that I'm a workaholic, have too much going on, and then on top of it volunteered to help my friend, holistic vet Lisa Pesch,  at her clinic for a few days due to a staffing crisis.

In addition to sleep deprivation and getting behind at my real job, my freelance jobs, and my personal life, working in a vet clinic turned out to be unbelievably stressful for me. I say "unbelievably" because I've worked on the outskirts of the veterinary field for a long time now. I worked for the Veterinary Information Network for years, where nearly everyone  was a vet. I've been friends with vets, and I've even edited vets. I thought I knew a thing or two about veterinary medicine.

But until now, I've never spent hours in a vet clinic watching an endless stream of dogs with end-stage cancer and owners looking for a miracle cure sitting in a passion of hope in the waiting area. Never had to smile and take a check from someone who clutched a vial of herbs in their hand and then hoisted their Golden Retriever into their arms to carry her to the car. Never played a choked voice mail message from an owner who had come in for the first time earlier that day, asking if the fact that her dog was cold to the touch and barely responsive meant she was out of time.

Never imagined that could all happen in just one single day.

In the past, I've been angered and infuriated at the hordes of uncaring jerks who let their dogs ride loose in the back of pickup trucks, chain them out in backyards, feed them crap food, and gasp and act outraged at the idea of spending several hundred dollars, let alone thousands, on a pet's vet bills - at even the suggestion that a pet is entitled to not feel pain or loss or grief or fear if it can be avoided, especially if that might cost a few bucks.

Working as I do in online pet communities, from running the old Pet Care Forum on AOL, to editing two of VIN's pet owner websites, to my current job at PetHobbyist.com, I've often encountered pet owners who were clueless and not really all that interested in changing that fact. Careless breeding, dangerous husbandry, thoughtless management - all of it has left me cynical about the ability of the average person to care for their pets adequately, let alone excellently.

But today I saw a 15-year-old calico cat lovingly brought in by her owner for an expensive first visit acupuncture appointment, because his regular acupuncture vet was out of town, and got fax copies of a year's worth of costly bloodwork and urine testing on another cat. I saw a long string of appointments dotting the book for weeks ahead, all for a dog who, if she sees ten more sunrises, I'll be stunned. I mailed out refills on Chinese herbs to people whose thick files demonstrated they'd made a serious and expensive commitment to the longterm care of a beloved companion animal.

I remember my first holistic vet, Cheryl Schwartz, saying to me that the thing she hated most was all the people who would come to her at the end of a pet's life, when he or she had been beaten down by suppressive treatments, bad diets, and stressful lifestyles, wanting her to do what the oncologists and chemo and radiation couldn't do, save their dog's or cat's life. What Cheryl wanted were the puppies and kittens, to use holistic medicine at its highest level, to build a strong and hardy little animal who would have a better chance at a long and healthy life. After all, chemo and radiation are always there if we need them, but the benefits of holistic medicine don't actually amount to miracles, no matter what the snake oil salespeople tell you.

But I can't help but feel my heart ache for these seekers of miracles, doing what I'd do, what I've done, to help my dog or cat: Anything. Anything at all.

So if you have a healthy dog or cat watching as you read this and wondering when you're going to get up and take them for a walk or make their dinner, please - give them the best chance you can now, with a good wholesome diet and lots of love and walks and clean air and water and a really good holistic vet. Do it all.

But if you have an old dog or cat, with tumors and kidney failure and a bad prognosis and a string of vet bills and failed therapies behind him, well ...  most of the holistic vets won't thank me for saying this, but try it for them too. Because sometimes miracles actually do happen. I've seen it.

But if you go see Lisa, wait until her regular office manager is back, because I can't take  any more.

Then Again, Sometimes Kansas DOES Suck

I try to be upbeat about Kansas, because I have some wonderful progressive friends living there. And I mean, they elected a Democratic governor! But sometimes there's just nothing to do but ask, "What the hell IS the matter with Kansas?"

A story in today's  Salon  sent me out onto the Web looking for more details of a case I'd not previously heard anything about. I found what I was looking for on the website of the ACLU, in a bare-bones bulleted account that made me break out in a cold sweat just reading it:

• In February of 2000, Matthew (Limon) and another male teenager were both students at the same co-ed residential school for developmentally disabled youth in Miami County, Kansas.  A week after Matthew’s 18th birthday, Matthew performed consensual oral sex on the other teenager, who was nearly 15 years old – three years, one month and a few days younger than Matthew.
• Kansas has a so-called “Romeo and Juliet” law (K.S.A. § 21-3522) that makes the penalty for statutory rape less severe when the case involves two teenagers.  (....)
• Because the “Romeo and Juliet” law excludes gay people, Matthew was charged with criminal sodomy instead under K.S.A. § 21-3505(a)(2). (....)
• Matthew received a sentence of 206 months (17 years and two months) in prison, when a heterosexual teenager with the same record would serve a maximum of 15 months for the same offense.  Unlike a heterosexual teenager, he also must register as a sex offender and undergo 60 months of post-release supervision.

Matthew's case was appealed on equal protection grounds all the way to the US Supreme Court, which vacated his sentence and sent it back to the Kansas courts, who ignored everything and convicted him all over again. The ACLU has appealed his case to the Kansas Supreme Court again, however, in over six months there has been no ruling. According to the ACLU:

Matthew Limon has now been in prison for a little less than five years, already three years and eight months longer than a heterosexual teenager would have served for the same offense.  If he were heterosexual, he would have been released in May of 2001.  He is not set to be released until April of 2017, when he will be 36 years old.

My question about what's the matter with Kansas was, of course, wholly rhetorical. I know very well what's the matter. And so does author and mom Ayelet Waldman in the Salon article that sent me on my quest in the first place:

The case of Matthew Limon exemplifies the ugliness and brazenness of American homophobia, but while that may be the most important strand here, it's interwoven with adult discomfort with children's and teenagers' sexuality. The first strand is easy to untangle and resolve. The State of Kansas' justification for the horrifying disparity between its treatment of Matthew and that of his heterosexual counterparts comes down to this: Boys who get blow jobs from other boys are so impressionable that they might "turn gay." Apparently, all the social science research in the world pointing out that sexual orientation is innate, that evidence of it surfaces far before puberty, makes no impression on the wise lawmakers of Kansas.

I have no doubt there are plenty of good people in Kansas who know how wrong this is. (I'm trying and failing to resist the impulse to add the qualification "although listing them would not even tax my Typepad bandwidth allotment".) I don't drive a Volvo and I don't drink lattes but if this is a "traditional American value," the heartland is in even worse shape than I thought it was.

From Your Mouth To Her Ears

I know, I know, Kathy Flake says we have to take the "no hit and run blogging" pledge, and I'm breaking it. But I had like two minutes and spent it reading James Wolcott's blog and had to share the love:

It's shaping up as a very interesting spring and summer. More and more I become convinced that we will look back on Bush's flight from Texas to meddle in the Shiavo case as the moment he overplayed his hand and pissed his "political capital" out the window.

Find out why. He convinced me.